Does your onboarding process create the right first impression to help you retain top real estate agents?
After joining your brokerage, a new agent's first impression is your onboarding process. If it’s clunky, slow, and uses outdated tech, new agents will think your brokerage is the same way.
The right tech can offer agents advantages over competitors. If you don’t have best-in-class tech starting from onboarding, top agents will look for other brokerages that offer them the tech they need to succeed.
To attract and retain new agents, you need to modernize your brokerage beginning with onboarding. Wondering how? Let’s take a look at the first step – creating agent profiles.
The first step to modernizing your onboarding process to retain top agents is creating agent profiles.
During onboarding, each agent needs to complete tasks and upload documents. Each agent may need to upload different documents as well. If you manually manage onboarding, you have to keep track of each agent in a spreadsheet and follow up with agents to see what tasks they’ve completed. This can be time-consuming.
With manual management, it’s easy to get agents mixed up. So, you might think one agent has everything uploaded and is good to go. It’s only later you find out you don’t have all the compliance documents you need for that agent because you mixed up agents. This creates headaches for your brokerage and agent – leading to your agent looking for another brokerage.
To accurately keep track of each agent’s onboarding, you need back office software with agent profiles. With this software, you can create unique agent profiles for every agent. In just a few clicks, you can accurately see which agents have completed which steps of onboarding.
That way, you can easily keep track of agent onboarding and create a streamlined digital experience – saving time and making onboarding easier for agents.
Along with creating agent profiles, you can also improve your agent onboarding process by customizing checklists.
Agent onboarding has a lot of steps for you and your agents to keep track of. If you manually manage your onboarding process, it’s easy to forget steps. While a new agent could forget a small step, your agent could also forget crucial licenses, tax forms, or other necessary documents.
If you have agents working without having the right compliance document, your brokerage could be at risk of severe penalties and fines. Missing documents can also have negative consequences for top agents – prompting them to leave for a brokerage with foolproof onboarding.
Instead of manually managing paperwork collection and other onboarding tasks, you need back office software with customizable checklists. Onboarding checklists require agents to complete the current task before they move on. As such, agents can’t start working with clients until they have all paperwork submitted – protecting you and your agents.
With customizable checklists, you can tailor your onboarding process to the unique needs of your brokerage. It only takes a few minutes. And, these customized digital checklists are easy for agents to use – creating a better agent experience and improving retention.
Another step to boost your onboarding process is using digital documents.
Agent onboarding requires a lot of paperwork. If you manually manage the onboarding process, agents have to fill out paper documents and either submit them in person or scan them in.
It can be hard for agents to keep track of so many paper documents. Plus, it’s time-consuming for agents to do everything on paper. As such, requiring outdated paper documents can create a negative agent experience
To create a positive agent experience starting with onboarding, you should use digital documents and document storage. With the right back office software, you can create digital documents that agents eSign – which is faster and easier for agents.
You can also store all documents digitally with back office software. Any paper documents your agents have (like a license) can be quickly scanned into this software and stored. So, your agents have all their onboarding documents in one place – which is one less task your new agents have to worry about.
With digital documents and document storage, you can create a seamless, fast, and easy onboarding experience that makes top agents want to stay with your brokerage.
Having onboarding documents, tasks, and checklists on the cloud is another way to boost your onboarding process to retain top agents.
Manually managing onboarding often requires agents to be in the office or at a specific computer to complete onboarding tasks. So, agents have to find time to come into the office to work on onboarding. And, they can only complete onboarding tasks during office hours, instead of whenever works for them.
Local onboarding not only wastes agents’ time. It also slows down the onboarding process. This means agents have to wait even longer to get started working with clients. A slow onboarding process that agents can’t do on their schedule creates a negative agent experience.
Instead of requiring agents to be at the office or one computer to onboard, you should use back office software that’s cloud-based. That way, agents can access onboarding checklists, upload documents, sign documents, and more from anywhere. Some back office software also has mobile apps to make onboarding even more convenient for new agents.
By having onboarding on the cloud and easy to do from a smartphone, you create a great digital experience that keeps top agents at your brokerage.
The last way to create a great onboarding process that helps you retain top agents is to monitor onboarding with a dashboard.
If you manually manage onboarding, the only way to know agent process is to talk to agents or go through files to see what’s submitted. Constantly pestering agents about onboarding progress can annoy and frustrate agents. Plus, manually checking in can be time-consuming and keep you from focusing on high-value activities to grow your brokerage.
To monitor onboarding progress without inconveniencing agents or wasting time, you need back office software with an onboarding dashboard. This dashboard gives you the big picture overview of agent onboarding progress for every agent. You can also click on each agent to get a more in-depth look at their progress.
With onboarding dashboards, it’s easy and quick to see agent progress. Since you don’t have to spend hours tracking down agents, you have more time to address any onboarding problems or questions agents have. This can help the onboarding process go more smoothly for agents – improving their experience and leading to higher retention.
Your onboarding process is the first interaction agents have with your brokerage. As such, your onboarding process sets the tone for your agent’s perception of your brokerage. An outdated, slow, and frustrating onboarding process can create a negative experience that leads to low agent retention – and less brokerage growth.
To keep top agents, you need to create a better onboarding process. You can do that by creating agent profiles, customizing checklists, using digital documents, onboarding on the cloud, and using a dashboard to monitor onboarding progress.
The easiest way to create a better onboarding process is with back office software. If you’re looking for the best back office software for agent onboarding and management, Brokermint is the way to go. Along with modern agent onboarding and management, Brokermint also streamlines transaction management, accounting, commission calculation, and reporting and analytics.
Get your Brokermint demo today to start improving onboarding and retaining top producers.
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